Full English Breakfast

As breakfasts go, the English Breakfast is probably the best known breakfast world wide. Or at least most people think they know what it is. Yet outside the UK, very few people ever eat a Full English Breakfast. Even in Great Britain, it is gradually losing its fan base.

The English Breakfast is cooked, or more precisely fried. Hence its synonym: Fry Up. It is also known as Bacon and Eggs after its basic ingredients which are (per person) a couple of rashers of bacon, 1 or 2 eggs, 1 or 2 sausages, 4 or 5 mushrooms, a tomato, toast, orange juice and tea.

Full English Breakfast

The fact that the UK land mass is only 2.54% of that of China while her population reaches only 4.62% of that of China (with the help of about 250,000 Chinese residents) – does not prevent the Great British Breakfast to be geographically greatly diversified. Consequently, it is also known as Full Scottish Breakfast, Full Welsh Breakfast, Ulster Fry, or Full Irish Breakfast.

Ulster Fry Up

Depending on location, variations include black pudding (blood sausage) or white pudding (like black pudding but without blood), kipper (a whole herring that has been split from tail to head, gutted, salted, and cold smoked), baked beans, tomato ketchup and brown (HP) sauce. When an English breakfast is ordered with everything on the menu, it is often referred to as a “Full Monty,” a name attributed to Field Marshal Montgomery of World War II fame. However, in the last ten years or so, “The Full Monty” is more likely to to refer to the 1997 film of that name than to the Great British Fry Up.

No description of the Great English Breakfast is complete without reference to the debate raging in the media. Have a look at controversy in the Times of April 2008, or an earlier investigation by Perry
Stalsis, the UK restaurant spy.